Across the literary pages | 15 August 2011

Tristram Hunt reviews his parliamentary colleague Kwasi Kwarteng’s book, Ghosts of Empire.

‘Ghosts of Empire marks a return to traditional, Tory scepticism shorn of ideology and purpose. There is little rhyme or rhythm to this history; it is a tale of chaps doings things and then other things happening, mostly to foreigners. Which is both its strength and weakness.


Holding together his chronicle on the end of empire in Iraq, Kashmir, Sudan, Nigeria, Burma and Hong Kong is Kwarteng’s thesis of “anarchic individualism”. In essence, there was too much autonomy given to imperial agents on the ground. “Officials often developed one line of policy only for successors to overturn it and pursue a completely different approach. This was a source of chronic instability in the Empire.”


And here was where the “ghosts” of empire were laid. David Cameron used a recent trip to Pakistan to suggest that many of the world’s problems could be blamed on British imperial policy, and Kwarteng offers up the data.